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The Crazy Thing About Grace




I moved to Germany in the last week and having lived in many cities in my life and having to have moved a lot between countries both me and my wife, the move was easy. We are simply used to having our luggages packed almost all the time. I guess this is life. From London days and Basildon nights to a new life in the suburbs of Neidersachen ( Lower Saxony, Germany), a suburb in the middle of nowhere. Praise God for Internet, Telephone, Water, Rewe (akin to ASDA UK) ,  the brand "Ja" (the equivalent of ASDA Smart Price) and my wonderful landlords. Th house is a lovely thing and once we get it arranged, then we are going to be very happy. Last week we even had our first guest. Praise God! I always wanted to welcome people to my house and till date this is the first property that has been in my name (and I am just renting this one). So, what is the point of all this? Well, it is to tell the manner that I am overwhelmed at the amount of change in my life. I carry Euro in my wallet, drive on the wrong right side of the road and have a wife! 

So, being the man of the house I tried to get some second hand furniture to adorn my empty house and found it so hard to speak in German and ended up not finding a good piece of furniture and not buying. I went to get a sim card and stood in line for a long time to be told that I did not have the right documents and I had to drive back twenty minutes in my rental car while I was trying to save cost on transport. The change, the new things, the new found freedom and the scary responsibility and the lack of knowledge of the language and the inability to converse with anyone even the guy who cut my line in the traffic and caused a panic in my heart frustrated me. This frustration played out so negatively that I got so angry at God and said what was the point of staying in this place when I am jobless, clueless, voiceless and scared!

Somehow I manged to drive back home and wanted to crawl like a bug into the house unnoticed. My wife was at the door, she saw me and smiled. I didn't. I really was sad. But then she did something. She opened the door well aware that I didn't get to do anything I set out to. I didn't get a study table, nor a sim card, nor was happy with the drive. Then she hugged me and kissed me. I enjoyed every microsecond of the warm hug and the soft kiss. I felt broken inside, yet this kiss and hug somehow made up. I was expecting her to be sad that I didn't accomplish anything,yet she sat me down at the table. She poured out some water and set in front of me some cooked rice and king prawn curry. I was bewildered at her action. She said that it was OK and she was just happy to see me.

You see, grace works like that. I may be a horrible sinner, I may be a big failure, yet the crazy thing of the Father is that He welcomes us with open arms and warm kisses. It is never meant to make sense. That is what Grace is. Unmerited to me, undeserved to me yet given in bountiful. Praise God that my wife was able to dispense grace to me in the situation i felt broken. Praise God that she understood failures and was able to comprehend grace. Praise God that Jesus saw all this and much more and even more failures of mine to Him, my wife, my family and the whole world and said to me that He Loves Me More. 

Its the crazy thing about Grace. It seems insane to give anyone grace , and it becomes the height of insanity to receive grace - because we want to live in a world where our worth should determine our end. The truth is that we are not worthy in any sense to take the next breath of air into our lung and yet we live.
 
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